šŸ”· xDuoo TA-26 Tube Amplifier

Just got mine today - that hum/buzzing sound…it makes me want to return it ASAP.

I’ll give it another week or two, but yeah…not a great first impression :slightly_frowning_face:

Pull the power tube out, run it with just the preamp tube in for three days.

1 Like

Safe to say the ā€œpower tubeā€ is the large one in the back? Yes, you’re still dealing with a noob here :slight_smile:

Yup. Leave the little one in, big one out. Keep it on for sometime. I did about three or four days on my DV I do believe.

I did this straight-away and I had heard of it on DV enough times as a fix for this common occurrence.
I didn’t even try it straight-away to find out if I had the hum. I wish you luck!

1 Like

It took a full 7 days for my tungsol pre tube to fully stop humming. Sucks it took a bit but still loving it.

1 Like

Great to hear! What did the trick, just usage?

Buzz got much less audible after the 72 hour burn in and then a gradual decline with regular usage afterwards. Gonna try out a shuguang and or psvane next.

Update on the buzz - it goes completely away when I plug the amp to a dongle DAC via an RCA-to-3.5mm cable.

Makes me wonder if my JDS Element II shouldn’t be used as a DAC for this amp? :thinking:

Makes me wonder if that is another case of a Ground Problem. IIRC someone had a similar humming/buzzing issue with a different amp that went away by adding a ground point to the amp.

1 Like

Buzzing aside, this amp has quickly become a favorite of mine. I’m blown away by what I’m hearing about 80% of the time with this thing, especially with the HD 6XX.

I was THIS close to selling my 6XX as I just didn’t think they sounded great. Boy was I wrong.

5 Likes

Yep me with the MT-604…every time I touched the chassis the humming went away…bought a grounding cable and all good now :+1:

1 Like

Agreed. hd6__ and dt 880 600 ohm were all meh on my magni/modi stack. Upgraded to this and modi multibit and I’m so damn happy everytime I fire them up.

how would you compare the sound of this vs element 2? I feel that element 2 already makes 6xx sound almost perfect but I’m really curious how different it sounds with ta-26.

I got a Feliks Audio MK2 for my HD600 and am convinced those Sennies are meant to be run off of tubes… they just sound awesome then, right?

The buzzing is likely a result of a ground loop or a mismatch of the output/input impedance of the rca connections. Do you have both the Element and the TA-26 on the same power strip?

1 Like

I’m new to this hobby, so I’ll try explaining as best as I can :slightly_smiling_face:

The 6XX really opens up with the TA 26. It’s a more fun and lively listening experience. One could argue the Element sounds more accurate (and narrow), but I would never choose it over the TA 26 because it’s not as fun a listening experience to me.

Just saw the below review and found it to be VERY insightful. The 6XX is mentioned here too, so take a look!

I forgot to share an update about the buzzing issue. At this point, I no longer notice it! Perhaps there was a burn-in period that did the trick…not really sure.

Yep, just tripled-checked and there’s no buzzing at all (from the headphones) right now :+1:

1 Like

Sweet. Then it most like was one of the tubes. This can happen.

I should be working, but these bad boys just came in the mail :smile:

1 Like

Thank you again – I got rid of the buzz on my new tubes in less than a day! It’s not completely gone yet, but it’s barely audible now.

Pull the power tube out, run it with just the preamp tube in for three days.

1 Like

Tube Recommendations

I’m really enjoying this tube combo for the TA 26:

1 Like